It has something to do with the good stuff I find on this site and the general good will it fosters, and something to do with the next two weeks leading up to Obama's inauguration (signalling the end of 8 dreary-ass years of George W. Bush).

And something to do with what's happening along the Gaza Strip, and also Obama's first couple Supreme Court appointments, and how fast the world is shrinking through the wonder of cyberspace.

Given whose child he is, the severity of his pathetic core personality is understandable. Poppy and Bar are good examples of people who probably should never have attempted union in the first place, but it's too late for that kind of musing now. How much they mitigate their son's pathetic profile is something to leave for the shrinks and historians.

will have an extraordinarily difficult but nevertheless successful first term and will appear so formidably impressive and approved of by late fall of 2011 that even an unstable ego-maniac like Mitt Romney will realize it would be pointless to challenge him.

Sarah Palin might win the GOP nomination by default, as Willard and Huck will survey the battleground and conclude that it isn't worth trying to defeat Obama.

Obama rolls to a second term.

Eight years of progressive judicial appointments. I could get used to that.

let alone get to the senate over Murkowski, let alone get to the GOP convention as anything but a sideshow speaker. Expect some other noname egomaniac to think that now is *their* time to shine - or a bigname egomaniac like Newt.

shut up! shut up! shut up! (repeated one of Bill's outbursts to a guest) - a, fine discourse. Wasn't it delicious to read how everyone at Fox can't stand him - even Murdoch - but business is business and for now he still brings in $$

is going off the air? His choice or a business choice? If it is the latter, than I predict that as his rants get more bizzarre after Obama is president that he will find an ever decreasing audience - and as he is forced to reconcile his egotistical sense of self-importance with public dismissal and irrelevance... then some kind of psychic break/implosion might follow shortly? I really get the sense that he is more convinced of his self-importance than Rush - I sorta think that rush in all his inglorious bluster - knows that it is for show. Or at least to a slightly bigger degree that BillO.

I feel badly for Barney, the Bush's dog. He likely tried his best to be a good dog but the stress of living with fools in that godawful ugly house was just too much and in the last year or so, he's pretty much gone to pieces. There've been at least 2 incidents in which Barney reportedly snapped at / tried to bite a reporter.

Maybe it was a political statement about the media.

But more likely Barney's losing it. Dubya didn't offer much support for Gulf Coast residents and the suggestion is strong that he ignores his pets as well.

Barney's memoirs would be compelling. I'd buy a first edition, no questions asked.

I predict the Obamas will do better by their pooch.

I want them to go a step or two further and build an animal shelter on the acreage of the White House, hire homeless humans to run it, with housing provided for said humans as well. Rahm can work out the details.

The Republicans will have a cow over it, of course, but it's a good idea, relatively low overhead, imminently affordable, and symbollicaly potent.

maybe we now will begin to have public policy created and pursued that actually takes concern with the citizens rather than with being primarily concerned with the profit opportunities (and gouging of the public) for cronies and big donors.

34. I'd be on board for that, definitely, and with Chu and Solis, it feels as if

Obama is reasserting what's good about civilization after 8 years of Dubya's callous disregard for just about all of civilization.

It's odd, too, that the so-called "moderate" Republicans have been so profoundly silent these last 8 years. It seems to me they just formed a reclusive little cadre in a church basement somewhere while upstairs all around them, Jim Inhofe and Saxby Chambliss burned their villages to the ground.

to realize that more bluster will not regain them an ounce of power. Early indications are that these so-called leaders of the modern GOP will be wandering around in the wilderness for quite some time.

43. Salin, you had it exactly right. I just like to add the devoured-by-bears

part, even unprompted, and even if it's a city street and not a wilderness.

Bears and wolves, even mountain lions. In my fantasy the Republicans-in-the-woods is besieged and devoured by any one or all three of those creatures, preferably in uncountable dozens, and long-starved.

and the playlette - almost has a greek chorus with that Run Liza Run chant... Your line made conjoured up a scene with an earlier era Parisian and rural French mobs with pitch forks circling around and indeed it is the wolves and bears in the greek chorus chanting "Run, Inhofe, Run!"

31. While we admire the resourcefulness of Hansel's white stone strategy and

Edited on Sun Jan-04-09 09:20 AM by Old Crusoe

Gretel's historic timing in slamming the oven door shut on the witch, it seems to me the crux of the tale concerns the ethical liabilities of their parents.

The stepmother p-whips the father and gets him to take the younguns out into the deep wilderness and leave them for the bears and wolves. The precipitant for this is the stepmother's awareness that there'd be more money and food in the household without 2 hungry mouths to feed.

The father consents to this plan. Tell me he isn't a pathetically weak monster. Tell me he wouldn't be the subject of a vigorous CPS investigation.

Abraham agrees to kill Isaac for God; these kids' dad agrees to dump them in the deep woods. What's up with that?

so it just sticks and slops off after they get to throwing it at each other.

And here is a question - why is it that the long hidden Ferraro gets so much sudden press rather than calling upon for opinion a similar era former (and longer term) congresswoman Pat Schroeder? I would much rather hear what she has to say than Ferraro. While she wasn't on a ticket - she did briefly make a primary run (or at least an exploration) in 1988. Also penned a really good book - 'Cleaning up the House'.

Here's hoping that the Obama administration obviates the need for another Nader presidential campaign.

I don't want Nader silenced, but I can't understand why he never seems to smile. Voters seem drawn to presidents who smile frequently. They seemed to be lifted by Jimmy Carter's broad smile, by JFK's terrific humor, and even by Ike's kindly smiling.

Nixon scowled a lot. McCain, in the rare moments when he did smile, looked like he was testing his facial muscles after elaborate dental surgery.

get on an airplane with key staff and translators, etc., and land in Havana with a view toward making friends.

Castro has made several consecutive U.S. presidents look like fools. The rhetoric we've hurled at Cuba has been nasty and deceitful.

It ain't no way to behave.

I hope Pres. Obama confers dignity to the people of Cuba and establishes respectful diplomatic relationships and other trans-cultural initiatives with Cuba, but without ruining sandlot baseball as it is currently practiced on that island.

Baseball is truly in its pure essence on the island of Cuba. IMO it should remain that way.

53. I don't expect my country to be perfect. Even less would I demand that

it be perfect.

Perfect is good to strive for but impossible to reach.

But that said, we could do a whole lot better than we are. Obama tapped into the notion of hope as an ideal, as a value, as a social glue.

McCain never had any over-riding theme to his campaign, other than "Hey, I'm a war hero and you should vote for me." That was about it for the McCain campaign, and this was not a year voters were terribly drawn to war heroes, their having looked around and seeing damned few.

Rumsfeld. Condiliar. Franks. And on down the list of thieves and yahoos and incompetents running things for the Bush administration.

So Obama teased a theme out of History and wove a magnificent garment with its threads. It helped that he could speak beautifully and that his instincts and timing were so good. The right-wing media and the gaggle of right-wing talk show hosts raised Rev. Wright into a media spectacle and Obama responded with a landmark speech on race in Philadelphia. Advantage Obama.

If we cannot be perfect, we can do better.

I think there is a lot to answer for regarding Bush's two terms, and that Obama is charged with the goal of restoring our reputation around the world.

We the People have no quarrel with the citizens of Iraq. Our president lied his way into war there and Obama must try to restore some balance in the way we are perceived.

After 9/11 Bush had the greatest opportunity ever presented to an American president to establish good will in the world, and he sqaundered it almost instantly with the invasion of Iraq.

Had more people voted for Al Gore in Florida than did, Dubya would never have been in a position to stop the vote count and steal the presidency.

I don't presume to know if the 911 attacks would have occurred under a Gore administration or not, but even if they were inevitable and long-planned, I think Gore would have localized the military response to where bin Laden et al were thought to be hiding.

I don't see Al Gore invading Iraq.

In the Hansel and Gretel narrative, instead of the witch in the woods being a bad person, what if she were a person inclined to rescue and restore? She could have led the younguns to an adoption agency, for example, or whatever the fairy-tale equivlent of an adoption agency might be, and far away from their father (who abandoned them in the wilderness in the first place) and the stepmother, who was much more evil than reviews have suggested.

I started to feel it yesterday with the announcement that Michelle and her two daughters have moved into the Hay Adams until January 15th. As the announcement broke, they awaited the arrival of the next President of the United States.

With the inauguration coming up, plans are daily discussed on our local networks. Streets are starting to be blocked off to insure Obama's security. Plans are discussed as to how millions of visitors coming to the political capital of the world will be accommodated with welcoming smiles. The anticipation of The Event is starting to grow and will continue to do so each day until The Moment is here.

The thrill is back and will continue to swell each passing moment. Here's to kicking the thread of one who deserves the prerogative of saying what he needs to say to pass the time away until the new day.

Nice to hear from you, Old Crusoe, and here's a to the future we so eagerly anticipate.

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